Monday is for shitpollsting about sex in fanfic

[lunabee34]

I was just commenting in china_shop's journal that I don't write much explicit fanfic anymore and that I don't really read it much now either. When I first got into fanfic, the porn aspect was novel for me, and almost everything I read was explicit. Now if I do read explicit fanfic, I'm just as likely to skip all the sex scenes so I can get to the good parts: Draco crying in the bathroom because Harry hates him or Tony crying in the workshop because Steve hates him or, you know, some other people crying and misunderstanding each other egregiously (like in ways that stretch the limits of credulity).

And that got me to wondering about what the rest of you think about sex in fanfic. Please discuss any and all points in comments! Tangents welcome.

Poll #22479 And then the taller man licked into the tallest man's mouth

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

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I often skip the sex scenes in explicit fanfic.

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yes, and I'm going to tell you why in comments
9 (25.7%)

no
12 (34.3%)

how much is often?
14 (40.0%)

Never thought I'd be reading fic that features __________, but here I am. Reading it.

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OT3's

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do not solve love triangles, sheesh.
8 (25.0%)

are the best way to resolve love triangles, sheesh.
24 (75.0%)

Effective sex scenes are really hard to write.

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yes; I mean you can't just write, "she tasted like strawberries, and sugar, and something uniquely her," TWO times in a single fic
14 (42.4%)

no; you get the right combo of elements (say, spanking, some egg custard, and a little light bondage) and *somebody* out there's going to find it hot
5 (15.2%)

sometimes
14 (42.4%)

Comments

[sholio]

Hee. XD

I typically range from mostly uninterested in, to actively put off by sex scenes, and skip or skim them 99% of the time unless they're the point of the fic (as is often true of, say, sex pollen, sex comedy, etc). I mean, I can read sex scenes and sometimes I really enjoy it, but at heart I'm pretty much a gen fan.

But I also feel like, when I first got into reading fic with pairings (circa middle 2000s; I was almost exclusively a gen reader up 'til then) there was an expectation of obligatory sex scenes, especially in slash, that's not quite as much of a thing now. In SGA, for example, I don't think you really ever saw a get-together fic over 10K that didn't include a sex scene. The Obligatory Consummation Scene was as much of an expectation in fic as it still is in genre romance. And I feel like that's less true now, or at least there's more variety and less of an unspoken expectation that romantic fic has to follow a certain basic template. Which means the sex scenes are more likely to only be included if they're relevant to plot or character, as opposed to just kind of being there, and they can also hit at different plot beats in the story than pretty consistently happening at the 90% consummation-of-relationship point as in so many fics in the past. All of which makes them more interesting to me, and less like the sex scene is just shoved in there because it's supposed to be there.

... but to be fair, I don't know if my impressions on this are actual trends or just a matter of which fandoms I've been in lately. I've also gotten a lot more analytical about the way romance is put together since I started writing it, so I notice more of that sort of thing than I used to, as well.

[lunabee34]

Oooh, this is a really good and interesting point.

I know exactly what you mean about the Obligatory Consummation Scene. *dies*

I'm going to pay more attention to that because I hadn't thought of it in that way.

I mostly only read HP and MCU now with occasional forays into LotR and random things on the flist. I feel like the OCS shows up less frequently in the HP than the MCU; the HP stuff still tends to have sex, but it's not positioned in the last chapter as the moment the whole fic is leading up to.

[chelseagirl]

Well, remember our discussion of how you assumed that since the main couple in my book consummated in chapter 2, you thought perhaps they were not the main couple? ;-)

[lunabee34]

Ha! Yes!

I mean, that's the way every romance novel I read in the 90s goes, right? The heroine is attracted to the no-good scoundrel (or she assumes he's a scoundrel even when he really isn't) and spends the whole novel fighting her attraction only to give in at the last.

It's not my fault. I blame Rosemary Rogers and Johanna Lindsey.

LOL

[chelseagirl]

All of this discussion of one finger and two fingers and such actually has me realizing that the sex I write is definitely more romance-novel suited. EXCEPT he never "plunders her mouth" or "punishes her with a kiss" and I keep the simultaneous orgasms strictly limited . . . .

[lunabee34]

Heeeeee. If I never read "her pleasure" as a euphemism for female genitals again, it will be too soon.